A reader based in Dubai sent me the image file above today with the following message:

Someone had affixed this poster on my car yesterday morning - all the other nearly 100 cars in the area too had the same poster. Very interesting, esp. with all this talk about Sheikh Zayed....

This same reader e-mailed me a few days earlier to fill me in about "all this talk about Sheikh Zayed". He says:

Anyway, I'm based in Dubai and there have been some wild rumors/reporst spreading in Dubai over the lst two days that Sheikh Zayed is in a coma and been pronounced "clinically dead" - have you heard anything like that? It's be interesting if any of your readers had heard the same thing.

There were a lot of questions raised as to the succession of the Sheikh and the relationship with Dubai the last time he was ill. If this news is true, then I wonder why all the secrecy because it just gives credence to the rumors about the internal struggles within the ruling family.

I was always under the impression that everything in the UAE was hunky dory because of its healthy economy. But, obviously I don't know enough about the political workings in the UAE. I thought I'd share this with everyone so that if any of you have any details (or more rumours) about what's going on, then maybe you could fill us in.

These are interesting times in the Gulf, indeed.

This entry was posted
on Thursday, October 14, 2004 at 10/14/2004 10:25:00 pm. Permalink

2 Responses to 'Democracy for Dubai?'

Sheikh Mo (The "Geek Sheikh") has been hosting a folk culture festival for Iraqis. He recently married the Jordanian princess who is into horses. I forgot her name.

Sheikh Zeyad denounced the crackpot "institute" which had been a poisonous fount using his name as a patron. And he disassociated himself from it. In this vein, he is scheduled to host a brotherhood and semi-tolerance conference which will include Christians and Buddhists, maybe some Hindhus and others, but no Joooz. He still can't manage to say the J-word ;-)

You know, even if he still can't "tolerate" me, I forgive him. And I shall "tolerate" him anyway, even if he isn't ready to reciprocate.

I used to think of Sheikh Zayed as the Bad Apple Sheikh in the Gulf, but I give him a lot of credit for separating himself from that crackpot institute. He has been making steps in the right, more constructive direction lately, IMHO.

As far as I know, Dubai itself is pretty much hunky dory, but when you get wealthy and your people get educated and start thinking for themselves they start looking for than just a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. I'm not sure what you can call it, and philosophers have tried to pin-point it for centuries but without success. If you ask Plato he would declare that in a imperfect state(basically any state since his idea of a perfect state has never existed, and probably never will) Aristocracies down the line will turn into democracies. However he also says that democracies will degenerate into chaos and will only be brought to order by a tyrant.Anyhow, you can never stop change you can only hope ride the wave